In Part I of this article, we discussed overall submission and resubmission
strategies. But now let's look at some engine-specific guidelines that will keep
you out of trouble with the individual engines.

Submission Limit per Day: 5 pages or more with their new procedure.How long does it take to index a page? 2 days to 2 weeks

With AltaVista, rely on the use of links to get the pages in your site
indexed. Unless you've made significant changes to your pages, don't resubmit
them. Instead, let AV's spider find those changes during its next spider run.

Try submitting your pages using "www" and not using it in the URLs.

AV won't index a site submitted as an IP address. A rep from AltaVista
explains, "The spider is doing reverse DNS loopups when an IP site is
submitted. You must be registered with Internic and have DNS running to be
indexed by the spider."

Does AltaVista have a limit to the number of pages from a particular domain
that can be in its index? AV answers, "In reality, the whole site could be
indexed with no restriction on depth, except that we have size limitations and
stop the spider once the index of the site has a certain size." In other
words, they aren't saying. (Is this surprising?)

To check to see if your pages are in the index, enter your URL in the search
box like this:

url:yourdomain.com (reveals every page under the root domain)

url:members.prodigy.com/yourwebsite/ (narrows the search to pages within your
site, if you're under someone else's domain)

At times, Excite will only accept the main page of your site through their
submission process. Other times, it will accept interior or doorway page
submissions. There's no doubt about the fact that Excite definitely prefers main
pages over interior/doorway pages, however.

Therefore, make use of visible links to all of your important pages off the
main page of your site, and give the engine something to index.

With Excite, there's an unwritten "rule" that generally only 25
pages from a domain can be in the index. Of course, like most search engine
rules, this one is broken all the time. However, don't be surprised if your site
is limited to having 25 URLs in Excite's index.

Because of this rule, pick and choose the URLs yourself by making use of
robots.txt files.

Though PositionPro recommends submitting only 10 URLs a day to Excite, Jim
Reinhold, Engineering Manager of Excite, says "Our limit is 25 URLs per
domain per day."

To check to see if your pages are in the index, enter the URL without the
http:// prefix, like this:

www.myveryownwebsite.com/webresources.html

You can also search for the root domain to find many pages from the same site
at once. Enter your root URL, such as:

With Google's supplying Yahoo!'s supplemental index, submitting to Google has
become even more important.

Submit all of your important pages to Google. However, with Google's unique
way of indexing, your links should be picked up by this engine with no problems.
But, why take a chance - submit your important pages.

You can submit up to 10 URLs to Google a day and be safe. "Google
doesn't have a number per se," says Stob. "When I first approached
them, they asked me to keep it low so we started at 2 per day. They were in the
middle of building a new index. Since then we have brought the count to 10 per
day."

Stob continues, "Could I submit 50 a day? Probably. Would I consider
doing it on a large site? Probably."

With Google, be sure to have other sites link to your Google pages, or those
pages may not be picked up in the index.

To check to see if your pages are in the index, search for your domain name
like this:

www.yourdomainname.com

Then, click on "Find web pages that contain the term." From there,
you can choose "Search within results" to narrow down the search to
particular pages.

Note: Your best bet for submitting to the Inktomi engines is to go through
their pay inclusion program. For more information, visit: http://www.positiontech.com.
If you don't want to pay to submit, your next best bet is to submit to Inktomi
through Canada.com.

As you know, Inktomi supplies results to HotBot, Canada.com, iWon, GoTo, MSN
Search, and many more search services. To get your site into the Inktomi engine
faster, use their pay inclusion program, or try submitting to Canada.com or
Anzwers.com instead of through HotBot.

Be sure to submit all important pages of your site to HotBot. Try submitting
the same page using different variations of the page. For example:

You may find that your sites using the "www" are ranked slightly
higher than those without the "www."

When you submit a site to Inktomi, have you noticed that it may be appear in
the index for a month or two, then be dropped? Jim Stob explains what might be
happening. "Inktomi will analyze a page for inclusion in their index. It
may show up for a month or two and then be dropped. It is dropped because
Inktomi has not seen it come up in a search and has determined that it doesn't
have any value."

So, if the page doesn't get accessed through a search engine, it will be
dropped from the Inktomi index?

Stob answers, "Yes for Inktomi, no for AltaVista. Inktomi has two
indexes as you probably know.

Have you also noticed that your rankings fluctuate in HotBot or other
engines? Stob explains, "Rankings will alter by the hour with some engines.
If you lose the spot for more than two weeks, you should be concerned."

To check to see if your pages are in the index, use their Check URL form:

Or, visit HotBot's main page and choose the "Advanced Search"
button, which is on the left-hand side of the page. The SuperSearch page will
appear.

Find the Location/Domain box toward the middle of the page, and enter your
domain without the "http://www" prefix in the domain box. You can
choose other variables, such as the page depth and the number of search results
you'll be shown. Click on Search.

Though Northern Light prefers that you submit just one page to the engine,
you can submit your interior and doorway pages, and you should.

However, as with all engines these days, make good use of hidden links on
your main page to other important pages of your site.

To check to see if your pages are in the index, search for your domain like:

yourwebsite.com

Then, choose More Results from this Site.

In conclusion

When submitting to the search engines, play it safe. Don't submit over and
over again, and look at each engine's submission guidelines carefully. If you're
going to err, err on the side of being conservative.